Please Roy! Don't Ask Me to DELETE This.

Roy has given me a place to think about tango in a different way.


Here are some of my thoughts on Tango as a dance, a form of expression, a philosophy, if you will.  Some is old material.

Roy  

P.S.  It is a bit kitsch.

                        On the Spiritual Physicality of The Tango
                                             by  Roy Whitman

 The Tango begins with the embrace between consciousness and necessity, or the spiritual and physical worlds, which assumes a restricted form (Adorno & Horkheimer).  The embrace represents one physical unit, like an anchor, with its own weight and synergy.  The steps of the tango, however, are light and ephemeral.  It is both Beethoven and Bach at once, or the physical and spiritual entwined (Kundera).  The dance is both spiritual (heavy) and spirited (light) with two physical beings together like Jacob wrestling with the Angel (Genesis).  It is both a restricted physicality (Cohen) and a restricted spirituality (Whitman).  It is the forces of nature colliding with the forces of heaven (Wagner).  It is the very breath of God (Michelangelo).

 

The Tango is neither a purely physical phenomenon nor purely a spiritual phenomenon.  The physical attributes of it can influence the spiritual attributes and the spiritual attributes can influence the physical attributes (Osborne, “Marx and Freud,” Elster “Making Sense of Marx,” and Engels on Marx) and each can interplay with the other in a myriad of nuanced and subtle ways.  The Tango is pure physics; to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (Newton), combined with improvisation inspired by the primitive Id (Freud).  Think of “Summer breeze makes me feel fine/tangoing with the jasmine in my mind” (Seals & Crofts); “Dust in the wind/all we are, are tango partners in the wind” (Kansas); and “The answer, my friend, is tangoing in the wind/the answer is tangoing in the wind.” (Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary)

 

Tango is a most utilitarian form of dance, satisfying both the higher and lower pleasures, or the spirit and the body. (Stuart Mills)  It is both a Gemeinschaft, or community, and a Gesellschaft, or society. (Marx)  While the former is based on a relatively homogenous culture and tends to be intimate, informal, cooperative, and imbued with a sense of moral obligation to the group, the latter is more formal, goal-oriented, heterogeneous, and based on individual self-interest, competition, and complex division of labor. It is Japanese discipline, teamwork, and craftsmanship, (Toyota) combined with a pursuit of egotistical advantages. (Smith)) As such, it is subject to relativity or the influence of space and time. (Einstein)

 

Tango is art and the culture of love. Colorful and dream-like (Chagall) yet abstract, angular, and obtuse while being sensual and hypnotic (Modern and Impressionism), Tango captures the essence between two people or forces. It is Eros and Thanatos vying for predominance or the Ego reconciling with the Id. (Freud).  It is Romeo and Juliet, Samson and Delilah, Marc Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Maria and Tony, the King and I, and Captain Von Trapp and Maria.  Our daddies always said :”It takes two to tango.”.